Reason for vendor lock-in observation
Reason for vendor lock-in observation
Posted Feb 1, 2006 8:16 UTC (Wed) by fredrik (subscriber, #232)In reply to: Maybe it can give Java ME a bit of healty competition? by drag
Parent article: Nokia to Release Python for S60 Source Code
Well, there is (AFAIK) only one vendor who provides devices with the S60 platform. So, as soon as you develop for that platform you can only use your software on Nokia devices. Even if you use python, which is platform agnostic in general, when using the S60 platform specific api:s, you get a lock-in effect.
One could of course argue that the java-path is a similar form of platform lock-in. Obviously Java ME source code wont work on non-java devices. The difference is that you can buy devices from most providers (sony ericsson, nokia, siemens, lg, motorola) and get a reasonable level of hardware platform independence.
Now, I must confess that I have not tried to develop with the python api on the S60 platform - though I hope to have time to do so soon - so I can't say for sure what level of nokia-specific code will be involved. And Java ME really isn't the holy grale, work arounds for specific phones are common. I guess it's somewhat a matter of semantics...